1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control device for a processing system that performs a predetermined process on an object to be processed, a control method for the processing system, and a storage medium that stores a processing program. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method for controlling transfer of an object to be processed.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, most processing systems provided in semiconductor plants include a transfer mechanism that transfers objects to be processed, and two or more processing chambers in which a predetermined process is performed on each object to be processed. In this case, the method of transferring each object to be processed to a plurality of process containers is important to increase the throughput of the processing system and to improve productivity. Given this, in order to effectively process objects to be processed, there is a method in which the transfer destination of each object to be processed is determined such that each object to be processed is sequentially transferred to a plurality of processing chambers (hereinafter, also referred to as an OR transfer).
If an abnormality occurs in a given processing chamber during the OR transfer due to a malfunction or the like, it is favorable that the object to be processed that is scheduled to be transferred to the processing chamber in which the abnormality has occurred is evacuated once to a carrier, and then transferred to a normally operating processing chamber. By doing this, reduction in the overall throughput of the system is avoided to the extent possible. Accordingly, a technology has been proposed that optimizes the transfer route depending on an operating state of each of the processing chambers. If one of the processing chambers cannot be used due to a malfunction or the like, this technology enables effective processing of the object to be processed by using another processing chamber.